New Poetry by James Walton

Crazy, Crazy Love on the Seniors Card/

Sideways Steam Train

Delay the departing train

down at the rail head,

the heart has four chambers

but only one fully ticketed love.

So spin the cylinder with gentleness

place the antique snub of it with care,

you want this geyser single life to blow

a detonation and aftershock of lyrical candela.

Run run over the drenched platform

slide slip and screech to a rattling tin sky,

turn around the face at the blotting window

chant it breathe it grasp it at the handle.

Make the rusty trigger from the taste of cinnamon

get there scramble by the step up,

in you go trip over the stranger’s stare

open the scrapbook at things that should have stuck.

Tell her things falling apart are beginning again

of how quicksand is not a way to be cleansed,

the lone shot was all that was ever needed between you

and you still feel its mad career taking you beyond destination.

- James Walton 2016

James Walton lives in the Strzelecki Mountains in South Gippsland, Australia. He has been published in The Age and Sydney Morning Herald newspapers, and many journals and anthologies. He has been short listed twice for the ACU national Literature Prize, is a double prize winner in the MPU International Poetry Prize, and Specially Commended in The Welsh Poetry Competition.  His collection ‘The Leviathan’s Apprentice’ is available. He’s been a Librarian, bred Salers cattle, and was a public sector union official for many years.